Carrier route record
ASAUS→SFO
Alaska Airlines · Austin to San Francisco
- Flights
- 226
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 8%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on AUS to SFO earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 55 minutes. That rests on 226 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,638 at 75.5% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's AUS to SFO record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 71 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 224 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.88%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
72.4%
Every carrier on AUS to SFO, 2,788 flights
These figures cover 226 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Alaska against every carrier on AUS to SFO
Alaska flew 226 of the 2,788 flights on AUS to SFO, about 8% of it. Its 84.4% on time is 12 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 84.6% to Southwest at 57.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 75.5% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 57.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 411 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 13 | 84.6% | 17 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlines (this page)thin sample | 226 | 84.4% | 55 min | 0.88% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 1,638 | 75.5% | 76 min | 0.37% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 500 | 69.2% | 63 min | 1.00% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 411 | 57.0% | 55 min | 0.49% | D+ |
The spread between United and Southwest is 19 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 19 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When Alaska runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 17 points, against 19 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am84 flights90.4%
- 8am–11am42 flights92.7%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm100 flights76.0%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 92.7% of the time, against 76.0% for the afternoon window. That is 17 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 100 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Alaska on AUS to SFO through the year
- Jul–Sep 202547 flights89.4%
- Oct–Dec 2025168 flights84.9%
- Jan–Mar 202611 flights—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 84.4% on time across 226 flights.
Split by quarter, Alaska on AUS to SFO logged 47 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 168 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 11 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 84.4% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 93.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 74.3%, a spread of 19 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Alaska on AUS to SFO runs when it is late
Alaska on AUS to SFO often beats the schedule: 73 of 224 completed flights, 33%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 35 late arrivals split 11 under half an hour, 13 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 11 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early73 flights32.6%
- Within 15 min116 flights51.8%
- 15–29 min late11 flights4.9%
- 30–59 min late13 flights5.8%
- 1–2 hours late9 flights4.0%
- 2+ hours late2 flights0.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 224 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 48 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 16 still arrived on time. Only 3 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Alaska on AUS to SFO
The latest arrival of the period was on 23 December 2025, 3 hours 13 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Three of the five worst days fell in December 2025.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 23 December 2025 | 3 hours 13 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 29 December 2025 | 2 hours 57 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 December 2025 | 1 hour 52 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 November 2025 | 1 hour 50 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 12 November 2025 | 1 hour 30 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why Alaska runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 1,915 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%National Airspace System
- 17%Carrier
- 5%Security
54% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 1,915 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 54 to one. The split is drawn from 1,915 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 92.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.88%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 1,504 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 87.5% on time across 225 flights, 3 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 226 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking Alaska on AUS to SFO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 226 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 84.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 224 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- AUS to SFO, every carrier
- Alaska on SFO to AUS, the return leg
- United Airlines on AUS to SFO75.5%
- Delta Air Lines on AUS to SFO69.2%
- Southwest Airlines on AUS to SFO57.0%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.